Ruby Implementation of the OpenEHR Specifications

The openEHR project has developed specifications for future-proof interoperable Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems [1]. This project provides the specifications and implementation on which the ISO/CEN 13606 standards are based. The implementation has been formally described in Eiffel, C# and Java, but not in scripting languages (which are popular because of their higher efficiency and faster development). We have used the Ruby language to implement the openEHR specifications for the efficient development of new healthcare computing environments, and to investigate the universal applicability of these specifications. Our Ruby implementation covers almost all of the specifications and the Archetype Definition Language parser, and although some problems have emerged, most of them have been resolved. We are attempting to apply this platform to Ruby on Rails to obtain a rapid development environment for an EHR system.